Live Nude Girl by Kathleen Rooney

Though this book is not what one would call a “navel-gazing” memoir, we as readers do spend a considerable amount of time gazing at author Kathleen Rooney’s belly-button…and breasts and arms and ankles and everything else she bares again and again while musing on her life as a live nude model. Rooney–an Emerson alum, co-founder of Rose Metal Press, and author of Reading with Oprah–supplemented her income during her stay in Boston by modeling for art classes and individual artists. In this book she bares all for the reader and for herself in search of the reason why: why would she or anyone else choose to model nude?

Like an artist circling their sculpture with a critical eye, Rooney examines all aspects of nude modeling. At first you might be suspicious: what can there be to it? You take off your robe and sit there naked in one position while people draw you. Well, first of all, Rooney would have issue with the word “naked,” and second of all, there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye. In a chapter titled “Naked If I Want To,” Rooney examines the difference between being “nude” and being “naked”: who holds the power, who is nude and who is naked, and who could make her feel naked even as she pretended to be nude.

Rooney is a master of integrating historical facts, scholarly quotes, and works of literature into her explorations of different ideas. At the same time she does this, she takes us through her actual experiences as a model and what she was thinking at the time. The chapter “You Only Live Twice” examines the idea of immortality in art. She walks through a class studio filled with life-sized Kathys and muses on their immortality and her inevitable aging and death. She discusses too the terra cotta warriors buried with Emperor Qin Shi Huang in the third century BCE–their own images stuck in time because a leader feared his own mortality. She even manages to weave in part of the poem “For the Union Dead” by Robert Lowell about the monument in Boston to the 54th Regiment. Everything fits together with her chosen theme and challenges the reader to expand their thinking to new realms.

Rooney’s own writing is reflective but not to the point of egotism, and scholarly but never dry or overwhelming. The quick switches among the essayistic passages, the more personal reflections, and the quote-heavy, research-driven sections catch hold of the reader and dispel any doubts that there is nothing to say on the subject. However, few if any besides Kathy Rooney could have written this book. It is a smooth, fast-moving, engaging read that is constantly surprising the reader. One might argue whether the book itself is naked or nude.

Tags:   Kathy Rooney · Llalan · memoir · nonfictionNo Comments